1. Field of the Disclosure
The present invention relates generally to wireless communication, and more particularly to a system and method for improving channel efficiency in a wireless link between wireless devices.
2. Description of the Related Art
Wireless communication is being used for a plethora of applications, such as in laptops, cell phones, and other wireless communication devices (“wireless devices”). It has been common in the past for the maximum throughput rate of a wireless link to be the most limiting factor in the speed of wireless communication. However, with the improvement in wireless communication data rates and the increasingly widespread implementation of wireless communication capabilities (e.g., including in devices with relatively limited processing and/or interface capabililities), it is possible for a wireless device to be able to natively support a lower maximum possible data throughput rate than the maximum possible data throughput rate of the wireless link. This can potentially lead to problems.
As one example, a mobile device in an 802.11 (WLAN) network might in some situations (e.g., depending on the processing capability and/or wireless adapter interface of the mobile device and the quality of the WLAN link) not be able to process packets at as high of a rate as it is possible for them to be transmitted over the WLAN link. In the absence of any mitigating factors, this can lead to packet loss, extensive retry attempts, and rate drops, which in turn can cause power waste and may degrade network capacity.
FIG. 1 illustrates two examples of how this could happen at two different receivers, e.g., depending on the implementation. As shown, packets may be buffered initially, but eventually once the buffer is full, packets may be dropped.
One simple solution is to limit the PHY rate of the wireless link to the highest supported data rate of the limiting device. This would avoid unnecessary packet losses, but a given packet would take longer to transmit and receive than if the maximum PHY rate of the wireless link were used, resulting in higher power consumption and lower network throughput. Accordingly, improvements in the field would be desirable.